"Nasty surprise for your Little Butcher," said one, "if he bumps into them. But I suppose he'll see them in time and wait for the Flight to help him."
"Not he," said the C.O. "He'll tackle the two quick enough, and probably outfly 'em and get one or both. Sheer off from a chance of crashing two Huns instead of one? Not much."
This was late afternoon or early evening, and the two heard the story of the fight that night, before and during dinner, between courses and mouthfuls of food, over cigarettes and coffee, in snatches and patches, in answers to questions and in translations of air terms they did not clearly follow. And again their impression of The Little Butcher grew firmer, that he was "a murderous little devil" and "a cold-blooded young brute." There was no mistaking in The Little Butcher's telling his huge satisfaction in his kill, his fretting impatience when he thought he might be baulked of his prey, his eagerness to finish his work; and frankly the two did not like it or him.
When he had gone off that afternoon, he had flown arrow-straight for the locality the Hun was reported in, climbing in a long slant as he went, looking out eagerly for any sign of his quarry. He found them—or, as he still thought, the one—by sighting the puffing bursts of our Archie shells, and took quick stock of the position. The sun was still high and in the south-west; the Huns almost due south of him. His great anxiety was to approach unseen to such a distance as would prevent the Hun escaping on catching sight of him, so he swung wide to his left to gain the cover of a slow drifting cloud that might allow him to come closer without being seen. He passed behind and clear of it, and continued his circle, south now and bearing west towards another cloud, and as he flew he stared hard towards the puffing shell-bursts and made out the tiny dots that he knew were two machines. He was sure they were both Huns, because the way they circled and flew about each other without any movements of a fight made it clear they were not opponents. The Archie shells wrote them down Huns.
With the second cloud safely between him and them, The Little Butcher swung and raced towards the two, reached the back of the cloud, and went laddering up towards its upper and western edge. He figured they could not be more than a mile from him then, but to locate them exactly and make his best plan of attack he skirted round the side of the cloud—a thick, solid, white cotton-woolly one—until he caught sight of them.
The instant he did so he plunged into the cloud and out of sight. He had kept so close to it that the one turn of his wrist, the one kick on his rudder, flung him side-slipping into it, to circle back and out clear behind it again. He looked down and round carefully for sight of any of our machines that might be coming up to interrupt his work and perhaps scare off his quarry, but saw none. But on the clear sunlit ground far below he saw a puff of smoke flash out, and then another close beside the hutments of Rorke's Camp, and concluded the two Huns were "doing a shoot," were observing for their artillery and directing the fire of their guns on to points below them. It gave him the better chance of a surprise attack, because at least one man's attention on each of the machines must be taken up in watching the fall of the shells. The Little Butcher revived his hope of bagging the two, a hope that at first had begun to fade in the belief that one might bolt while he was downing the other.
The worst of the position now was that the two were rather widely separated, that his attack on the one might bolt the other, and that the second might reach the safety of his own lines before he could be overtaken. The Little Butcher didn't like the idea, so he restrained his impatience and waited, fidgeting, for the two to close in to each other or to him. He climbed to the top of the cloud and circled with engine throttled back, swinging up every now and again until he could just catch sight of the two, ducking back behind the cloud edge again without being seen.
He was so intent on his business that it was only instinct or long habit that kept him glancing up and round for sight of any other enemy, and it was this that perhaps saved him from the fate he was preparing for the two. In one of his upward glances he suddenly caught sight of another machine full three thousand feet above him, and racing to a position for a diving attack. The Little Butcher, as he said that night, "didn't know whether to curse or weep." The newcomer broke in most unpleasantly on his careful plans. Two slow old Art. Ob. Huns were one sort of game; with a fast fighting scout thrown in the affair became very different. The two he had counted as "his meat," but now with this fellow butting in.... He felt it served him right in a way for not diving at them first shot instead of hanging about for a chance to bag the two. He had been impatient enough, Lord knew, to get at them, and he shouldn't have waited.
All this went through his mind in a flash, even as his eyes were taking in the details of the scout rushing to position above him, his mind figuring out the other's plan of attack. He wasn't worrying much for the moment about the attack, because he was still circling slowly above his cotton-wool cloud, had only to thrust forward the joy-stick to vanish as completely from sight as if he were in another world. But he wanted to frame the best plan that would still give him a shot at the artillery machines, and—
The scout above pointed at him and came down like a swooping hawk, his guns clattering out a long burst of fire. The Little Butcher flipped over and sank like a stone into the thickness of the cloud. He went plunging down through the rushing vapour, burst out of it into the sunlight below, opened out his engine, and, turning towards the sun, was off with a rush.